By Cindy Sams

Not way back — simply final month, in actual fact — I despatched a bit to a well-respected Southern lit magazine with the road “drunk as fiddler’s bitches” within the story. After acceptance, the editor marked it, questioning if I meant “britches.”

Mortified, I panicked. How had I missed one thing so apparent? My face burned. Absolutely each editor within the nation had now seen me with my writerly pants round my ankles.

Besides this time, the phrase wasn’t fallacious.

I’m a journalist by coaching with a late-life MFA in Inventive Writing. I work quick. Typically, too quick. I’ve been identified to hit ship with one eye closed, so juiced on the adrenaline of writing one thing good that I don’t take time to present it one other cross.

Proofing isn’t my sturdy go well with. I’ll admit that. My eyes slide proper over errors as a result of my mind fills in what I anticipate to see. I inform myself I’ll proof once more earlier than sending the piece out, however generally … I don’t.

I may blame my miscues on creating cataracts or crooked bifocals, however who would imagine me?

Cautious proofing issues. Editors deserve clear copy. Readers deserve readability. Writers owe it to the phrases to present them a ultimate go earlier than hitting “submit.” Print the work out. Learn it aloud.  Do what I so usually don’t: sleep on it. Catch the little buggers earlier than they embarrass you.

Which leads me to the opposite hazard of working too quick. Within the rush to repair my “mistake,” I nearly edited out my voice. I almost drove the editor out of his thoughts with my rush of corrections and counter corrections, however I meant “bitches.”

That’s the phrase I grew up listening to at my grandmother’s knee. Gritty, uncooked, and true. Most of the ladies in my clan expressed themselves in such full  Southern patois. Their phrases belong in my memoir and on the web page.

The editor additionally needed some figuring out particulars about “Dick” within the phrase “tight as Dick’s hat band.” There’s no prepared reply to that query. Grandmama by no means divulged the gentleman’s particulars or defined why his hat match so cosy.

Grandmama leaned on different Southern idioms that present up in my work infrequently:

• Mad as a moist hen
• Scarce as hen’s tooth
• Ain’t match to shoot
• Like a hen with its head lower off
• Don’t fry fatback in a rush
• Appearing too huge for his britches.

This time, I meant britches.

Writers know the urge to easy tough passages, edit out wordiness, make the language respectable and nice. However generally, the tough phrase is the fitting one and belongs the place it lands.

Revision is as a lot self-discipline as it’s artwork. So, go forward. Proof your work. Learn it for high quality, readability, and correctness. However don’t learn so shortly you miss errors or react to points so shortly you compound them.

In any other case, you’ll erase what makes writing worthwhile — a path of fiddler’s bitches staggering into the darkish, drunk and true.
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Cindy Sams is a Southern memoirist whose voice blends grit with grace. Educated as a journalist and sharpened by an MFA in artistic writing, she writes about survival, kitchens, and kinfolk throughout Georgia, Arizona, and Tennessee. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Reckon Overview, Properly Learn Journal, Pangyrus Lit Magazine, The Plentitudes Journal, and past.

Tagged: proofing, proofreading, Scarce as hen’s tooth